Ubud: Cultural hub of Bali

+ Ubud is the small town in the center of Bali, on the hills, where most of artists gather to expose their art. It can be pictures, handcraft, sarongs,... and the best: Massages!! :)  There is a very nice local market with lots of food and plenty of nice places to eat.

+ Each house has its own temple to workship the different Gods. Every morning, they prepare offers to the Gods and they place them in the entrance of the house and the entrance of each room. The offering varies but it normally consist of a banana leaf with: a bit of rice, flowers leafs, a biscuit,... and incense sticks. Sometimes (the good days) they also add a little bit of chicken (??). This way, the whole town smells very good. The process is repeated in the evening. It is really cute to see some many people doing this everyday.

+ We were at a couple of guest houses were they treated us very well. They first room, however didn't have a proper roof and that day (fullmoon) the cocks start "singing" from around 1AM !!! Besides of course of the spiders and others in the room with us...

First House

 
                                                            Second Guesthouse

 
+ The town is surrounded by rice fields where you can walk around, breath the fresh air and relax. The most astonishing is the fact that the rice fields are mixed with palms and jungle in a very tropical style: the "Bali style"

+ Already said before that in Bali there are plenty of temples. Here there is one dedicated to the monkeys. It is located in the forest and therefore called "The Monkey Forest". Watch out for the monkey!! they can rob you, pis on you and bite.... yes, really friendy and cute little animals.

+  We also did a cooking course with mandatory visit to the local market . Spicy spicy!! have you seen Dani? two heads taller than the rest of locals :)

Kuta, Bali: The surfers paradise at the other side of the globe

9th   June

+ Hello people! after long time without updating the blog  here we come again! in the meantime we have been changing continent twice and doing plenty of stuff, but ok, that will be told later, in due time. Now let´s focus on Bali. Bali is just amazing. It is such an interesting island with its own culture, very different from the rest of Indonesia. Most of people here are hindus in contrary to the main country's religion, islam.And they are very "practican" (will see that later). The Balinese people is great, very sympathetic and funny and their food, well, it is not thai food but it is very niceeeee and cheap!

+ So, step by step. Our first destination was Kuta. Our first nigth was really not good because we arrived at 1AM in the morning, it was raining and we even hadn't had dinner. We could just grap so food at the Kentaky fried Chicken!!! Wow.  Our first fast food experience after two very-proud-of-ourselves months. But that was just the first night. Next morning we found a wonderful guest house (with swimming cooool) and we discovered THE Beach! what a beach; white sand, huge waves and plenty of people to talk with. The best perhaps was the sunsets after a hard day of surfing. We did a surfing course and we basically Rock it! after less than 20 minutes were we both up on the board surfing like the great proffesionals... well, almost as good :) 

 Our lovely guest house: "Kedins II"

 

 Kuta Beach

*

+ Kuta is also known for its parties. That's exactly what we did. We found a very cool place where they gave drinks and food for free: Excellent to keep the budget!

A one day trip to Uluwatu

+ The balinese people, mostly hindus, have temple for every god, everywhere. They basically build these temples to protect themselves from various issues, especially from natural disarters like volcanos explosions, storms and Tsunamis. This temple is built in the south of the island, on a cliff and is supposed to protect them from the ocean. The location is really breathtaking.

+ As you will observe in the pictures, we are wearing very nice skirts. Well, they are not skirts, they are called "sarong" and are compulsory for entering into religious areas. Check out our style!! 

 

+ The surf in the south is extreme. Many people die every year due to either rip currents or to crashes with the coral reef under water. Defenitively not the place for learning...

 

 
       

Koh Phi Phi: the one from the movie The Beach!

June 7th 

+ the way from Koh Pha Ngan (east of Thailand, in the Thai Golf) to Koh Phi Phi (west, in the Andaman sea) wasn't exactly the best of our trip. Everything starts with a night ferry which brings you to mainland; it is comfortable since you sleep on mattresses on the floor. Comfortable yes, clean....uhmmm, well.... we don't really understand why the boat leaves at 8 pm because it takes 8 hour so you arrive just at 4 am. What the hell do you do at 4am?!! don't worry, the tuk-tuk guys are waiting for you to bring you to a bar where you can wait for you bus which leaves only at 6am. Totally sleepy, we wait, and wait and wait. We only leave at 9am because we are very few people and "sorry sir, but we aren't enough people to fill the bus and we are waiting for the group from Bangkok"....you know that you are about to miss the other ferry but they keep lying to you: "don't worry mister, the ferry will wait for you"... which of course wasn't true.... in any case, we arrived and it was worth it the hassle.

 

 
+ This island is by far the most spectacular of all Thai islands. Located in the Andaman sea, it was very much destroyed by the Tsunami few years ago and since then they are building up hotels so that its charm is about to dissapear. However, it is still very beautiful amazing!!

 

 

 

 + The small island is formed by two sets of mountains linked by a small/flat stretch of sand where the town is located. There are no cars and  party is 24h.... AWESOME!!!!

+ And the wonderful sunsets!!!!

+And its traditional beach bars and THE Buckets